A FRAMEWORK FOR PLANNING EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION USING INTERACTIVE WORKSPACES
Open Access
- Author:
- Leicht, Rob Michael
- Graduate Program:
- Architectural Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 03, 2009
- Committee Members:
- John Messner, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
David R Riley Ii, Committee Member
John Messner, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Michael J Horman, Committee Member
Ute Poerschke, Committee Member - Keywords:
- involve
virtual prototype
interactive workspace
communication
media - Abstract:
- Recent trends within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industry have increased interest in building information models and their impact on the integrated delivery of projects. While the value of these tools and methods is growing, the impact of the workspace and physical interaction of the team is often left as an afterthought. The value of the workspace, human interaction, and sense of team is not unknown; face-to-face interactions are commonly emphasized in collaborative charrettes for activities such as sustainable project planning. And there have been a variety of developments in improved media interface, ranging from interactive whiteboards and tablet PC’s, to augmented reality and virtual reality display systems. This study focuses on bringing the physical, virtual, human, and task elements together using the INVOLVE framework for planning Interactive Workspaces for more effective team communication, made up of seven elements: Interaction, Network concerns, Virtual prototypes, Organization, Layout, Visualization and Display, and Existential Collaboration. The focus of this study was the development of the INVOLVE framework for effective planning and use of Interactive Workspaces. Interactive Workspaces are spaces allowing ubiquitous and intuitive interactions with virtual environments. The framework demonstrates how the virtual and physical technologies relate to team interaction and communication. The study will be presented first from the background and development of this framework with a focus on face-to-face application in Interactive Workspaces (IW). This is introduced first with a study of the relevant literature and the existing facilities being employed for different virtual prototyping tasks and collaborative purposes. After studying these facilities, a preliminary concept for the framework was created, and then validated through interviews on the use of Interactive Workspaces employed within the AEC Industry. With these elements validated, a method was created to plan the uses and considerations for Interactive Workspaces to fulfill the needs identified on construction projects. In order to evaluate the framework for planning the Interactive Workspace components, observational quasi-experiments were used to demonstrate the application of the framework for two specific tasks and to validate those applications. The first quasi-experiment employed a series of 24 undergraduate student teams in the architectural engineering program at Penn State. The first round of the study identifies the aspects of the IW framework which influence the team interaction based on a conceptual design task, and tracked interactions among individuals and with the media interface to compare differences in use and outcomes between media modalities. In the second round of quasi-experiments, ad hoc teams were created from a pool of volunteers to perform 4D schedule reviews. Outcomes from both quasi-experiments indicated measurable differences in the individual contributions to the discussion and through the interface based on the Interactive Workspace configurations utilized, validating the application for these specific tasks and implying validity for the theoretical basis of the relationships for the tasks, the processes, and the communication needs for the application of the INVOLVE Framework.